Social Life of Climate Change

Seminar Series

These research seminars are interdisciplinary discussions around contemporary debates in the humanistic social sciences of climate change and the environment.

Events take multiple formats, including standard seminar format as well as more engaged discussions of relevant readings and works in progress.

The seminars are open to all. If you would like access to any of the upcoming seminars please email geog.research@lse.ac.uk.

If you'd like to join our mailing list, please sign up here.

The series is co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and Environment, the Department of Sociology and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

It is organised by Kasia Paprocki (k.paprocki@lse.ac.uk) and Austin Zeiderman (a.zeiderman@lse.ac.uk) of the Department of Geography and Environment and Rebecca Elliott (r.elliott1@lse.ac.uk) of the Department of Sociology.

Please contact Kasia Paprocki with any questions. Updates can be found on X and on the SLCC website.

Spring Term 2026

Feminist Perspectives of Climate Change: Social Reproduction and Survival in the Great Caribbean
18 May, 3-4.30pm, Online via Zoom
Prof Diana Ojeda, Departments of Geography and International Studies and Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University, Bloomington

Access Zoom link

Catastrophic narratives of the end of the world populate climate change knowledge and policy. Seeking to disrupt these narratives’ enticement of fear and violence, this lecture focuses on the places where the world has ended many times. In the face of US military interventions and ongoing environmental crises, I draw from feminist studies to explore the overlapping geographies of dispossession and accumulation, extraction and exploitation, and tourism and militarization that have historically shaped the Great Caribbean, situating it in the frontlines of climate change. From a perspective informed by social reproduction, I further delve into the lived experiences of climate change in the region and the everyday forms of resistance to it.

The politics of land and infrastructure in the making of Indonesia’s “Geothermal Island”
27 May, 4-5.30pm, OLD 3.24
Prof Emily Yeh, Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder

With 40% of the world’s known geothermal reserves and second in installed capacity, Indonesia plans to become a “geothermal superpower.” Geothermal is particularly important as a baseload power source as the country struggles to meet its decarbonization goals. In this context, Flores island was designated a “Geothermal Island” in 2017, but development of geothermal has been very slow due to resistance from indigenous communities. This resistance has been largely dismissed and misunderstood by policymakers, development personnel, and government staff, who paint Flores residents as uneducated or manipulated by outside interests. In this presentation I will discuss four case studies in Flores where geothermal development is either planned or implemented. In doing so I will highlight the politics of indigenous ontologies of land, infrastructure, and articulations of indigeneity in their struggles.

Towards a buoyant political ecology: Rethinking marginalization for coastal climate change adaptation in the tropics
9 June, 5-6.30pm, OLD 3.24
Prof Haripriya Rangan, Australia India Institute and School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Melbourne and Prof Judith Carney, Department of Geography, University of California Los Angeles

The land-water dichotomy plays a key role in the prevailing global climate change adaptation (CCA) policy discourse for tropical coastal areas. This dichotomy is implicitly informed by a land-centred conception of property which regards areas that fluctuate between water and land, or 'aquaterras', as marginal and in need of development to make them economically profitable. By adopting this perspective, mainstream CCA policies ignore the diverse, vernacular systems of adaptation that communities that dwell in such tropical coastal aquaterras have developed through multigenerational and lived experiences to negotiate climatic and contingent uncertainties. We call on political ecologists to jettison land-centred, economic representations of marginality and marginalisation in favour of a 'buoyant', critical CCA approach which recognizes and builds on the vernacular expertise of tropical coastal aquaterra communities.